How Not To Save The Earth
by JealousOfTheMoon
Summary: S4Finale, Take 2. It's all very well and good having the biggest family on earth... until you're trying to stop daleks from destroying reality and the wrong half of your big, happy family shows up to help, that is. FIVE: Team Tyler & Smith...Revised.
1. Sarah Jane

_The gist of this story is: instead of Martha, Mickey, Jackie, Capt. Jack, Donna, Rose, and Sarah Jane all popping up to help the Doctor, things somehow go awry and he winds up with very different people to aid him in his quest to rescue all of reality. _

_This first chapter banks on Sarah Jane's general uselessness in the s4 finale, an episode in s1 (SJA) where Luke naively facilitates an evil scheme of the alien, and another episode (s1, SJA) where he lets the villains kidnap him.  
_

**1. In Which Sarah Jane Is Hindered And Another Takes Her Place  
**

"Luke, stay here. Mr. Smith, keep him safe," Sarah Jane ordered.

"I'm sorry, Sarah Jane," there was a hint of smugness in Mr. Smith's voice, "but if I let you go out there you're bound to screw up. I'm afraid I'll have to keep you both in here."

"What do you mean?!" exclaimed the freelance reporter.

"See, this is why you can't be let out on your own: you're unable to grasp even the simplest of concepts. I. Can't. Let. You. Out. Because. You'll. Get. Killed." The last nine words flashed one at a time across his screen in bright pink letters as he exaggeratedly pronounced them. "Clear enough?"

"I can't just stay here and _do nothing!"_ cried she desperately.

"Oh. So I'm supposed to let you go out there where you'll do nothing—or worse, create a lot of trouble they don't need. I bet you were planning on taking your car and speeding away with the lights on to make it easier for those daleks to nab you."

Sarah Jane flushed bright pink. "Stupid computer," she clipped.

"See, you're short-tempered and goodness knows what stupid thing you'd have committed if I hadn't stopped you. You know you don't think clearly when you're irritated. I'd recommend a nice, quiet chat with your son."

"Yes…my son!" cried Sarah Jane. She whirled about the attic. Luke was gone. "Where's he gone?!"

"Hopefully not to get the car," Mr. Smith remarked dryly—if computers can be dry, that is.

"You don't understand, he's just a boy!"

"Yes, and raised by you, which means that he has absolutely no common sense. Add the fact that he's a genius, and you've got total catastrophe."

"Thanks for the reassurance!" the woman shot back. "Now I've got to go find my son!" She dashed to the door and turned the knob, but in vain. "Mr. Smith! Open this door!"

"Honestly, Sarah Jane," the computer's voice had taken on a bored tone. "You don't think I'd let you out? I mean, Luke's bad enough, but at least I let him out unknowingly. To release you intentionally would cause double catastrophe, and I can't have that on my conscience."

"You're a computer!" the livid woman screamed. "You don't _have_ a conscience!"

All she received in response was one word floating across the screen in calm blue:

_Hibernating…_

…**meanwhile…**

Luke Smith strolled briskly down Bannerman Road, staring at the ground and mumbling something about muffins.

Suddenly he stopped. Looked up.

Two daleks were plopped smack-dab in his way. Of course, he didn't know they were daleks, having only heard their voices.

"Hullo," he said cheerfully.

"Hello!" their semi-monotone voices rang in response, one rather high-pitched, the other more like gravel. "We are your friends!"

"Great! I love friends!" Luke beamed. "I know this one joke. When I wake up some mornings…"

"Now is not the time for jokes!" the high pitched dalek responded impatiently.

"We know a genius when we see one," the gravely dalek interjected. He seemed the more calm of the two—relatively speaking, that is. "We want to know if you can destroy reality!"

"Destroy reality? Of course I can tell you how to do that. Why would you want to…?" Luke asked, a puzzled expression lingering on his forehead.

"It's only a silly hobby of ours," the same dalek hastily assured. "You will show us how to destroy reality? You will do this? For your …_friends_?"

"Well…"

"Answer yes or no!" the less-patient dalek shrieked.

"Alright! Yes! But I'll need a _biiiiiiig _chalkboard…"

"What is this _chalkboard _you speak of? Explain! Explain!"


	2. Martha

Clarification: _Written because…where on earth was Tom?!_

Credit: _to Russ and others at BBC, not self. _

**2. In Which Martha Is Right (But It All Goes Wrong Anyway)**

"Oh, Martha!" cried Francine Jones, opening her mouth to unleash a dull monologue about how this was the place Martha was supposed to come to at the end of the world.

Martha cut her off. "Why'd I wind up here?!" she demanded. "I was _trying_ to go Tom, whom you've apparently completely forgotten about—_and_ who is probably going crazy with worry somewhere in Africa."

Francine gaped. "You…you mean, you didn't want to come see me?"

This earned her an eye roll from her daughter. "Doy. Apparently, Captain Jack was right…this thing _isn't_ ready. Project Indigo must interpret things as reverse psychology or something…takes you where you really don't want to go."

There was a pause as Francine processed this, but once she sorted through it offense was quickly taken. "Ungrateful child!" her mother snapped. "You'd rather be running around with that _Doctor_, wouldn't you?"

(Yes, we know that Francine watched the Doctor save the world in the last season, but that is irrelevant now. Clearly Francine has problems with memory loss, as evidenced by her completely negating the existence of Martha's fiancée.)

"Sorry! But I'm telling you, mum, that's the way it works!"

"Give me that," Francine growled, pulling apart the fasteners on Martha's front. Before the young doctor knew what had happened, Francine had the vest on and a hand on the switch.

"I want to stay _right here_!" shouted the irate mother at the vest. "And you know where I _especially_ don't want to go! Send me _right here!"_

She activated Project Indigo.

_Fwoomph! _Francine Jones disappeared.

Martha waited a few minutes. She tapped her foot impatiently. Thirty more seconds passed…she glanced exasperatedly at her watch.

"I was right," she muttered. "_I_ was _right_. Good luck, Doctor."

Smirking with an air of grim triumph, she stalked off to find some means of transportation to her fiancée's side.

Meanwhile, Francine opened her eyes to find herself surrounded by bright blue and yellow lights. She appeared to be lying on some sort of grate…oh, no…it couldn't be…please no no no no n—

"Who is _she_?" an unfamiliar voice sounded from above.

"What?" an unfortunately familiar voice responded (squeaked pathetically, Francine thought). "Francine? What are _you—_I mean, how—but that's impo—I mean—_what?!"_

"Kill me now," she muttered, and promptly passed out.


	3. Donna

Disclaimer:_ This was extremely difficult for me to write. I love Donna and her end is brilliantly tragic. I am not attempting to tear that down, but things needed to come full circle, and in the end Donna was just too much sanity to leave in the plot. I'm not quite sure how this will end (haha), but please rest assured that none of it is intended to take away from Donna's marvelous character, just as (most of) the rest of it is not intended to tear any character down. Apologies for the slightly lame chapter; it's mostly filler. More interesting stuff to come. As usual, I don't own. _

**3. The Semi-Rueful Fates Of Donna Noble And Others**

Wilf and Sylvia stared in horror at the dalek whose vision was most certainly _not_ impaired. It was about to cry "Exterminate!" but the sudden appearance of Rose (of whom more will be said later) distracted it so that it said "transmat!" instead.

A transmat beam burst from the dalek and nailed Wilf squarely on the chest. He collapsed into a pile of dust. Sylvia shrieked. Rose looked immensely interested. The dalek changed its mind and tried reversing the process (Of course, it could do that! It was invented by an evil genius, _duh_.) but things went screwy and it got confused and somehow Donna wound up standing in Wilf's place.

"Wha—?!" she exclaimed, not very happy about the situation. "Oi, you there, the oversized saltshaker, send me back or I'll—!" She launched into a detailed tirade complete with some very strong language which would be tedious in detail.

The oversized saltshaker was not paying much attention. Instead it swiveled this way and that, extremely baffled by the situation. "This is not according to orders," it finally pronounced. "I—must—have—_orders!_" With that, it teleported back onto his ship to report the situation to its superiors.

(If anyone has questions about how the any of this happened, I'm afraid I don't know exactly, but no doubt it had _something_ to do with genetic matrices…)

Meanwhile, Wilf found himself in the TARDIS. Unfortunately, the Doctor was standing behind the TARDIS controls at such an angle that did not allow him to pass into Wilf's line of vision. All he _could _see was Francine, still lying motionless on the floor and several strange blinking lights. (She had for the past half hour been periodically opening her eyes only to almost immediately release an anguished cry and pass out again, but now she was conveniently quite still.)

The stargazer took one look at his strange surroundings and began running around in circles, crying "Help! Help! It's them aliens, they got me and they've kilt 'er! Donna! Donna! The ruddy green things got me at last!" He came bolting around the TARDIS console, where he unexpectedly came face to face with the Doctor. "Yaaarrrgh! Take that, yah dirty alien!" he shouted, waving a gun in the Doctor's face. Before the Doctor could raise his hands in a pacifying manner or come up with one—no, two _brilliant _reasons not to shoot, or even contrive a grand speech involving the words _"I never would!"_ the spooked elderly man pulled the trigger.

_Splat._

The Doctor looked down in horror at the growing patch of yellow on his jacket. Why'd the silly man have to pull the trigger? Waste of time, that's what it was, time and energy –

He'd really liked this regeneration, too.

Wait. _Yellow?! _

He did a double-take.

Indeed, there was a patch of yellow on his lovely pinstripe jacket. Well, at least it wasn't blood, just a blob of paint, which meant he wasn't dying... Then the reality of the situation struck him—that he was left to face possibly the most insanely brilliant person in all of creation, and he had a self-induced-comatose Time-Lord-hating generally-Useless woman and a crazy old man armed with a paint gun watching his back. Forget dying, he might as well be already dead.

Not to mention he had _really, really_ liked this suit.

It was at that precise moment that the head of the Time Lord which had held itself high and fearless in the presence of Cybermen and Daleks met the TARDIS console in a gesture of hopelessness and despair.

_Clunk. _

Dimly above him through the fog of pain in his head and the noise of the TARDIS' disapproving hum came Wilf Mott's voice.

"Oh. It's _you._ I thought it was them dirty aliens…"


	4. Jack

**4. In Which Captain Jack Dies**

To quickly summarize everything we are going to skip no matter how fascinating it may be: Doctor finds earth, great big outerspace facebook, etc...etc... except Donna was sitting in her house sulking with Sylvia and Rose about how the Doctor couldn't see her. Rose seemed surprisingly content with the whole situation.

Let us leave them there and go to the Torchwood establishment.

As Captain Jack prepared to use his time-bouncer and go wow his fans with dalek-defeating deeds, he briskly gave orders to Gwen and Ianto and pushed buttons on his bouncer. A whirring noise began and the Torchwood establishment rocked slightly.

"What the—?" everyone exclaimed, because Russell T usually can't think of anything more original so why should I?

A large, glass tank sat in the middle of the room. It appeared to contain a brownish, wrinkled...thing. Gwen shrieked. Ianto yelped. Captain Jack strode towards it boldly.

"What's this?" he asked, swaggering a bit. "Some kind of an early birthday present from the daleks?"

"Hmm," It said slowly. "Apparently that thing"—he looked at Jack's time travel device speculatively—"can transfer you backwards from the future."

"What are you talking about?" Jack demanded, a crease lining his forehead. "Am I supposed to be scared here?" A cheesy, mocking grin broke across his face. "What are you gonna do—feed me the 'no, I _am_ your father' line? Oooh, I'm _scared!_"

"No, Jack," the Face of Boe snorted, "I'm not your father—even I never was _that_ twisted. Jack, I _am you._"

Jack's step lost a bit of its swagger as he tried to process this. Then the ex-con-man's eyes left his skull for a second. "NOOOOO!" he screamed in a fit of overly-dramatised all-caps.

"Search your feelings, Jack," FoB said solemnly. Jack was in too much shock to catch the intentionally stupid line, so the oldest creature in the universe added, "you know it to be true. They call me the Face of Boe, if that helps."

The faux-time-agent was now talking to himself. "Ack! I _am_ aging—but that thing? Face of Boe! NO! ... not my gorgeous, eye-candy-ish self—how can something so studly and appealing turn into ..._THAT?_ I mean, the Futurekind had me a little worried, but at least they're all scary and RAWR—this! A blob in a frickin' tank...?!" He dashed this way and that around the tank, as if staring at it disbelievingly enough would make it disappear.

When it clearly was not a figment of his imagination, he threw himself to the ground and wailed, "I can't take it anymore!" He pulled out a gun and shot himself through the head. _Bang._

The three living beings in the room waited a few seconds.

_Gasp_ was the sound of his sudden drawing of breath as he came back to life. He sat up.

"It's not fair!" he cried.

_Bang. _Fell over.

...

_Gasp._ Sat up.

"I just want to die my studly and charming self!"

_Bang. _

_Gasp. _

"Rose! Why couldn't you give me everlasting youth?!"

_Bang. _

_Gasp. _

"Curse you, Rose!"

_Bang. _

"You know, FoB remarked, "In my time, I'm actually considered quite handsome for my—"

_Gasp. _

"Shut up!"

_Bang. _

This time, as Captain Jack fell over temporarily dead, his wrist with the time travel device banged against the floor and pushed several buttons. FoB disappeared with his tank.

_Gasp._

"Jack," Ianto ventured, seeing his Torchwood counterpart was now conscious, "That _thing_ disappeared. Really, it's not all that bad, so maybe you could stop—"

_Bang!_

"Never mind," Ianto sighed. "Y'know what? Gwen and I'll just sit over here while you attempt suicide 'till kingdom come. Hopefully you have some way of keeping us safe planned because otherwise we're both rather useless..."

Meanwhile, in the TARDIS, Boe's tank had joined Francine on the floor. Wilf had gone berserk upon its appearance and spattered paint all over the glass before the Doctor managed to wrest the gun from the stargazer's hands but the man was still jumping about yelling. Boe was looking very put out about the whole affair, but his bad mood had nothing on the Doctor's.

"What did I do to deserve this?" he moaned, burying his head in his hands.

_Let's see..._ the TARDIS seemed to hum. _Flunked Time Lord Academy...stole a TARDIS...general irresponsibility...not to mention an ego large enough to_—

"Thanks," the Doctor muttered. From behind his fingers it sounded like 'fankf.' "I fink I get it."

_I try._

"And Wilf," he said wearily, taking his hands from his face. "You can stop hollering now. It isn't going to eat us."

"It!" FoB said indignantly.

"I'm not yellin' about _that_..." Wilf gestured to Boe. ("That!" Boe said indignantly.) "I'm just sayin' we need to put down somewhere 'coz we've got to meet up with her."

"Who? Donna?" the Doctor asked. _Finally! Some decent company! _

"No, not Donna—Rose."

There was a brief pause as the Doctor's mind went all: ..._processing..._

Then:

"_What?!"_


	5. Smith&Tyler

_Look who's back from the dead... and trying to update as many of my unfinished stories as I can this bright Christmas afternoon... consider it a Christmas present to my (probably very few) readers. _

**5. Team Tyler & Smith  
**_or __**The Daleks' Secret Weakness**_

"…and that's how I'd destroy reality," Luke finished brightly, gesturing to the fifty-six blackboards propped up against walls and cardboard boxes of an abandoned hanger that the daleks had so kindly provided him for workspace.

The daleks said nothing in response at first. They shot each of the boards with a transmat beam, presumably sending them to their ship. Then they turned to Luke.

"You will now die!" the high-pitched dalek pronounced.

"But—but—we were _friends_!" Luke protested.

"Daleks do not have friends," the gravel-voiced one informed him.

"Yeah! Moron!" taunted the other.

And even though there wasn't the time for it, Luke (not having much sense) promptly launched into a monologue of the trials of having no real birth and no upbringing and no common sense. Details would be tedious, but suffice it to say that the speech lasted six minutes and included much tearing of the hair and biting of the nails. It also ensured that wrapping up this finale would be done in haste and with much explaining-on-the-go since the writers just lost six minutes to monologue-ala-Luke.

Such is life.

The daleks, kind souls that they were, waited patiently for Luke to finish. They understood the code of television shows—that no character, good or evil, must get in the way of angsty monologues. Angsty monologues are what enable the viewer to truly connect to the characters on the screen, to feel like he or she is not so alone, that there is hope, and that somewhere out there is a six minute lapse in life's events built just for their own monologue of angst.

Such is television.

"…and so when a girl says, 'hey baby, what's your sign?' I can only blush and run away! If I had a sign I'd be able to know social misdemeanors when I see them—even if I did only blush and run away anyway—and then I wouldn't be such a moron, unable to tell between friends and enemies! Granted, I get to save the world a few billion times, but what's that to a little common sense and a zodiac sign!" He let out a sob and gasped dramatically for breath. There was an awkward silence for a few moments. Then one of the dalecs inquired,

"Are you quite finished?"

"Yeah, thanks," Luke replied somewhat awkwardly. Angsty monologues are all good fun, but one sometimes forgets oneself, which can be embarrassing if one is in the presence of Mortal Enemies.

"Thank Skaro!" the less impatient of the two shrieked. "We found ourselves an annoying blighter, and no mistake!"

"Silence. There is no more time for delay. He must be exterminated. We will exterminate the human." He turned to Luke. "You will be exterminated! Exterminate! Exterminate!"

'Blimey,' Luke thought. 'If they've got to say it five times before they can actually do it, no wonder they never succeed in killing off the main characters.'

_Ba-shoop!_

Before the daleks could follow through with their five-time threat and exterminate Luke, there was a flash of blue light from behind them and a figure appeared. He was of medium height, rather bald, and holding an impressive-looking—

Baby.

Luke did a double-take. Baby?

He was also still talking, as though he had been when he left. "No, Jackie, I said you're not going—give me the dang—oops." He looked around. "Didn't mean to push the button. Silly woman." Then he spotted the daleks and froze.

Nobody moved.

Then the baby in his arms—how does one put this delicately—issued forth a great white effusion of stuff smelling such as that which on ly babies can produce. It sailed beautifully over Luke's head and landed on the younger and more shrill of the daleks.

There was a moment of stunned silence bordering on reverence. Then—

"Aaaargh!" shrieked the dalek. "Contaminant detected—result, fatal—systems—imploding—self destruct—!"

It moved about in an inebriated fashion, 'till at last it glowed with an ethereal light and then exploded into itself, leaving only a faint after-smell that reminded one vaguely of sour milk.

The remaining dalek backed away slowly, eye-stalk fixed firmly on the child in Pete Tyler's arms.

"Deadly weapon present!" it deduced at last. "It must be exterminated!"

"Run now!" Luke shouted, grabbing Pete and yanking him towards the hanger door. "It's got four more to get through, that should buy us some time."

"I must exterminate!" The dalek intoned.

The door was stuck. Pete and Luke kicked and struggled with it.

"You will be exterminated!" The dalek spoke to the baby in Pete's arms. The child giggled and said "goo!" in a most charming of manners. The dalek was not dissuaded.

"Exterminate!"

BANG! The door flew open. Pete stumbled outside. Luke turned.

"Exterminate!"

There was no time. He had to distract it. No, set it back somehow. Baffle it. But what to do… ?

"Wait! You don't want to exterminate me!" Luke shouted desperately.

The dalek did not seem open to persuasion. "Daleks must exterminate the human race! It is their destiny! Exterminate!"

"But you can't exterminate me because—" He cast about for a reason. Nothing inspiring came to mind so he fell back on his old standby. "Because I haven't got a bellybutton!" Then he fled the hanger, leaving a flabbergasted dalek in his wake.

"No—belly button? Must—reassess information—humanoid—not human—destroy reality—exterminate—information fail—" It paused. Then, "Aw, screw it."

And it exterminated itself—without a six minute monologue. In some things, it would seem, daleks are stronger than humans.


End file.
